The State Department stepped in it. Again.
Now infamous for her dippy soundbites, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf might have topped her “ISIS just needs jobs” gaffe today.
Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, both former Secretaries of State, wrote an op-ed that was published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Brutally critical of the administration’s much touted Iran deal, the op-ed focused on the White House’s dismissive attitude towards the danger Iran poses. Kissinger and Shultz were less than impressed by the administration’s insistence on the necessity of a deal with a country whose priorities aren’t remotely in the same galaxy as those of the United States, noting:
Cooperation is not an exercise in good feeling; it presupposes congruent definitions of stability. There exists no current evidence that Iran and the U.S. are remotely near such an understanding. Even while combating common enemies, such as ISIS, Iran has declined to embrace common objectives. Iran’s representatives (including its Supreme Leader) continue to profess a revolutionary anti-Western concept of international order; domestically, some senior Iranians describe nuclear negotiations as a form of jihad by other means.
In sum, the op-ed eloquently observes the Iran deal is a complete and total cluster.
At a press conference held earlier today, Marie Harf was in no mood to discuss the WSJ lashing.
Flustered, Harf attempted to avoid questions on the WSJ op-ed, but Associated Press reporter Matt Lee persisted. “I read it and it’s far from nuanced. It’s pretty damning,” Lee says. “You just reject it outright? They say this is a recipe for disaster basically, but you say, no, clearly, you wouldn’t be pursuing something you thought was a recipe for disaster. Is that correct?” Lee reads a few lines of the piece, and lobs them back to Harf.
“I obviously disagree with that. I think that an Iran backed up by a nuclear weapon would be more able to project power in the region. So that’s why we don’t want them to get a nuclear weapon, that’s what this deal does,” Harf says. Interrupting Lee, Harf raises her voice and continues, “And I didn’t hear a lot of alternatives, I heard a lot of sort of big words and big thoughts in that piece and those are certainly, there’s a place for that, but I didn’t hear a lot of alternatives about what they would do differently.”
A lot of sort of big words and big thoughts. That ladies and gentlemen, is our State Department.
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